new photos from our garden

This is our wonderful pink dogwood; this year is  particularly spectacular…just look at all the flowers! The type is, “Satomi”, for those interested.

These roses smell as good as they look. We bought them specifically for the scent and the fact that they flourish in our west coast weathere(damp, chilly)The fact that they are beautiful is ALSO a major draw..lol.

This is our peony bush of which I have blogged before.See the TWO kinds of blooms???  It USED to ALL be the bigger type; a double bloom of a peachy/apricot shade. But over the few years that we have had it, most of the blooms have “reverted” to the single sized bloom of a light pink. Still pretty!

Actually the George Burns roses are on the left; a lovely yellowy/red white striped variety. They supposedly smell like CIGARS(hence the name..lol) but we think they smell fresh and are so pretty that it wouldn’t matter!

Lovely coloured and cheery petunias…the weather is just not warm enough to get them flourishing yet..

Cannot WAIT for things to grow…lol

Olympics almost over(sob)

So I have been away enjoying the Olympics(no I didn’t have the time nor money to attend events) but I did cheer our fellow Canadians daily from the comfort of our living room…

It is almost over..hard to believe!

We got an amazing amount of gold medals(13!!!!) which beats even the USA !

However the big hockey game is on today which is a clincher..

back!

Sorry for the absence; no excuses, just feeling lazy.

I was also so caught up with the Haiti tragedy(as was/is the world) that I simply hadn’t the time/inclination to blog.

However I had tons of things I COULD have written about; isn’t it always the way.

Thanks to my loyal readers who continued to FLOCK to my blog even though I wasn’t keeping it current.

It feels like we will be having an early spring so I have changed my header to reflect this. We already have tons of snowdrops and forsythia blooming and will be boring the rest of Canada very soon with our annual, “flower count”..

What is the Victoria Flower Count?

The Flower Count is an annual light-hearted promotion sponsored and organized by regional chambers of commerce, Butchart Gardens and Tourism Victoria. The goal is to bolster community pride and increase awareness of Greater Victoria as an attractive shoulder-season tourism destination. It brings national and international attention to the fact that Victoria (City of Gardens) has the mildest climate in Canada. While the rest of Canada and much of the US is still in the cold clutches of winter weather, Victoria often enjoys spring temperatures of 10-15° Celsius (up to 60° Fahrenheit).

Community Challenge

Each municipality across Greater Victoria is encouraged to take up the challenge to be the “Bloomingest Community” of the Greater Victoria area! People reporting flower counts will have their number attributed to their community. Whether they live on the Saanich Peninsula or in Sooke, every flower counts, for their own community and for the overall total.

How Did It Start?

In the late 1960’s, members of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce started a promotion called “Victorian Days”. In late February, dressed in Victorian era costumes, they would visit cities such as Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, handing out daffodils to the general public, radio stations and news rooms. In 1976, the event expanded to involve Victoria residents and create a fun promotional story through the counting of February’s flowers. The Victoria Flower Count had begun.

http://www.flowercount.com/

No snow for us!!

Even though we live “up there” (or up here, depending on your perspective)we have been enjoying NO snow.

I have wittered on before about the lack of snow in this part of Canada;ie upon Vancouver Island) Usually we get lots of rain(which we did lately) but today it is slowly clearing and cooling a bit, but NO snow is falling.

Last year at this time, we HAD had snow which really caught our little city by surprise, as it hadn’t been predicted. Chaos ensued but it was lovely to look out upon the snowy expanses beyond our door on Christmas eve and to hear that beautiful QUIET!

(How can you hear quiet? Just go out when it is snowing, and you will learn!)

But it is alarming to see the troubles in the places that HAVE been plagued with huge snow falls and I hope that if YOU are in one of these areas(around the WORLD) that you are able to get to where you want to be safely….

take care…

crazy traffic

We live on an island and used to congratulate ourselves for this saying that our traffic would never be as bad as it is on the “Mainland”.

Well now it is…

The traffic has increased in such leaps and bounds it is easy to forget that not very long ago we were all obsessing about the price of gas, and swearing that we would all curtail our excessive or un necessary driving.

Hmm, didn’t last long, did it?

Plus there are still plenty of folks still buying those gas guzzling vehicles such as SUV’s(MONSTER sized) and Hummers. Strange.

We live in a zone which is technically deemed, “country side”, our road used to be a two laned road, with a ditch on either side, even without street lights.

This area  is also inhabited by several schools.  Many of these schools have been forced to enlarge to accomodate the increase in kids forced to travel across the city to this area, becasue their old schools have been torn down.

Oh yes and there has been extensive development in the housing departments too, so naturally there is more traffic.

So we are in long lines to get from A to B even during the week.

Luckily, it is still dead quiet at night and we can see the stars, twinkling bravely away.